HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

You haven’t stopped talking about HootSuite so we’ll keep sharing stories with another HootSuite news round-up loaded with  your comments, case studies and compelling projects.

With the new school semester just around the corner, we thought now is a great time to see how social media can be used for research, sourcing and even librarians’ work. Plus, for new HootSuite owls, we’ve added in a couple of general articles and tutorials to help you earn an A+ in social media management.

As always, we invite you to follow HootSuite’s social bookmarks and/or follow @hootwatch to get the full firehose of knowledge. And now… here’s your homework:

oneforty – Featured Tweets: Mike Petroff Uses Hootsuite to Manage Emerson College Social Presence

Mike Petroff and his team at Emerson College are using HootSuite to help organize their social media efforts:

Hootsuite allows our account administrators to personalize the look and feel of their account, adding dashboard columns of search terms specific to their office. It also makes sharing and assigning replies between account administrators incredibly easy and traceable. Very rarely do tweets from our community go unnoticed. We can also share access to upcoming tweets and be on the same page with the events, stories and content that we’re promoting for a given week.

Library Tech Talk – Guest Post: HootSuite for Library Tweets!

This blogpost presents HootSuite to all librarians out there:

Librarians, If you have a Twitter account for your library, I highly recommend tweeting from HootSuite.com. If you currently tweet from the original web version of Twitter.com, follow these instructions to simplify tweeting on behalf of your library.

Want more HootSuite for libraries? “Using the Library Staff and Statistics to Create a Dynamic Twitter Program” covers it too.

Inc. – Shortlist of Twitter Apps for Your Desktop

This article focuses on different tools for managing Twitter, and the owl isn’t left out:

HootSuite—a great tool (and my personal favorite) with a user-friendly interface. All the standard Twitter functions plus the ability to track keywords and trends, post directly to Facebook, schedule posts, put followers into groups and the ability to manage multiple accounts. You can also track clickthroughs on your embedded links. HootSuite has both desktop and mobile versions.

Accelerated Online – HOW-TO: Setup HootSuite to Manage Your Social Media Accounts

This is a step-by-step guide to setting up HootSuite account with different social networks:

HootSuite is a web-based solution that allows you to manage your conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress.com, MySpace, and FourSquare from a single application. Let’s look at setting up HootSuite to manage your activity on Twitter and Facebook.

Social Brite -  Set up a social media dashboard with HootSuite

Another good video aimed at non-profit groups which takes you through the process of adding HootSuite account:

The screencast above helps nonprofits take advantage of HootSuite’s new capabilities. As I say in this short tutorial, it’s one tool to manage your organization’s presence across a wide range of social networks. Very cool.

Associated Content – How to Get More PV’s and Promote Your Content to All Your Networks at Once by Using HootSuite

This is a detailed list of HootSuite’s features that help distribute your content through social networks like never before:

I have found a savior in the social networking/self-promotion/getting more PV’s venue and it’s as simple as they come. Check out the amazing HootSuite, it does everything all at once for you. I’m new to using their free service and even on my first day trying it, I fell in love. It’s a wonder, and a breeze to use.

Mashable – 11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates

Our wise geeks at Mashable included HootSuite in one of their latest round-ups (and yes, we enjoy each time this excellent tech/web/social news site mentions us;-)):

Hootsuite has a broad range of apps, including their web-based original, mobile apps (iPhone and Android), desktop apps (Windows , Mac and Linux) and add-ons for Firefox and Chrome, all with the power to schedule updates.

RedZebraWorks – HootSuite on Crazy Pills

The new HootSuite features are introduced in this article (which made it in the round-up just for the awesome title):

Clearly HootSuite is on the move to build out their product. So far, they are on the right track by expanding features that combine activities and resources to combine a series of related and routine activities into a single dashboard, which is a real time saver.

News Roundup Accelerated Online, apps, Associated Content, features, HootSuite for libraries, Inc., Library Tech Talk, mashable, oneforty, promotion, RedZebraWorks, scheduling, Social Brite, SourceCon, sourcing, statistics, video

Cool hat club -- HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes and Tammy Camp

Replacing your RSS, one of the 20 sites to “Improve Your Twitter Experience,” and Blackberry excitement in Italy… all in a day’s work here at HootSuite HQ.

We truly enjoy seeing such great user created content about HootSuite and look forward to sharing your work with more fans. Thanks for your great work — consider adding your articles to our brand-new community forum.

Here’s a round-up of some recent accolades and tutorials and treats. As usual, keep an eye on all the HootSuite’s social bookmark stream and/or follow @hootwatch.

Tammy Camp - A Comprehensive Guide to HootSuite

HootSuite allows you to share add, edit, and share social network accounts, helping you manage your brand, or just helping you broadcast what you had for breakfast that day. If anything, unlike other aggregators, HootSuite is far more overwhelming than underwhelming.

It’s a beauty guidebook — thanks superstar Tammy!

Mashable – Top 20 Sites to Improve Your Twitter Experience

With its recent update and HTML5 support, social media dashboard HootSuite has become one of the most useful Twitter web applications not only for individual users, but teams managing several accounts. In some ways, HootSuite has the look and feel of TweetDeck with the big differentiator of it being a web-based application, not requiring any downloads.

It’s always a treat to be mentioned in Mashable — and we love their new short URLs too!

It’s Worth Noting – Replacing your RSS reader with Twitter + Hootsuite

We’re living in an age of information overload.  The difficulty isn’t finding information, but sifting through it to focus on what’s important and matters to you.

RSS feeds became commonplace several years ago and have been a great way to consolidate information sources using a RSS reader (e.g. Google Reader, iGoogle or even Outlook).  While these RSS readers served their purpose, if you’re looking for the most efficient way to sift through information or you’re just getting into this game, I suggest a Twitter + Hootsuite setup.

This is a great strategy — the RSS tool is a little bit under-known but so mighty when applied to a purpose. Cheers.

Wisnet.com – How to Connect Twitter and Facebook to HootSuite

HootSuite’s feature-rich application gives anyone the ability to post updates to their social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. This tool can be used by your business to manage multiple networks using one interface. HootSuite has many features including the ability to schedule tweets, add attachments, and shrink long web addresses so they fit nicely on Twitter – which is restricted to 140 characters.

Screenshot from: Wisnet.com - How to Connect Twitter and Facebook to HootSuite

Another great guide with excellent annotated screenshots covering a lot of material – wow!

BlackBerry Italia – Hootsuite, aperta la beta pubblica del client Twitter per palmari BlackBerry

Google translation: For those who do not know yet HootSuite essentially offers a suite of tools to manage their presence on Twitter and other social networks – like LinkedIn – and given the continuing growth of people using Twitter have thought to open enrollment to their free beta RIM BlackBerry handheld.

They are even excited about HootSuite for Blackberry in Italy — Grazie tanto!

Aubreandrus.com – Latest Social Media Obsession: HootSuite

But is it really that amazing? Yes. You can check your facebook, twitter, linked in, foursquare, and even WordPress blogs in one place. Again — all on ONE page. One log-in. One easy password.

Glad to hear you share our obsession with making amazing-ness.

Need More?

Keep an eye on all the HootSuite’s social bookmark stream and/or follow @hootwatch and be sure to let us know in the comments if there is a great article we’ve somehow missed.

News Roundup mashable, news round-up, News Roundup, rss, tammy camp, tips, tricks, tutorials

June 30th is Social Media Day — some cities have even made an official proclamation — and the folks at Mashable are hosting a barrage of worldwide events to celebrate and educate about the ways social web tools have revolutionized the way we share, communicate and engage with companies, government and friends.

Instead of planning a parade, HootSuite is celebrating with a release with a handful of fixes, tools to make your social media day more socially pleasing.

Tune-ups

In response to all the feedback and enthusiasm to last week’s HootSuite 5 release, we’ve made a few of the new tools a wee bit better — plus thwarted a few anomalies for a better experience.

Facebook Walls and Status: Facebook updates without links will post to both your Facebook Status and Wall, while messages with linked media will post only to your Facebook Wall along with thumbnail (help)

ReTweet Choice: Choosing default ReTweet style is a bit handier now with a pop-up window allowing you to choose whether you prefer “Old Skool” or “Twitter native” style re-broadcasts (help)

Quicker Scheduling: We’ve removed a mouse click from message scheduling — now simply choose the date on the calendar and click the button to queue your message to go anytime (help)

Security Migration

With many networks and services manageable from within HootSuite, information security is of top importance. With this in mind, next time you login to HootSuite, you’ll be migrated to OAuth security which is:

“An open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.”

The process will be largely invisible to you and will make connecting to additional services easier — as well as keeping login information more secure.

Further, this move keeps us in step with Twitter’s evolving security protocols which are changing to OAuth exclusively in the coming days. There should be no action required and your part but we wanted you to know what’s up.

Coming Next

So we’ve knocked the top few most requested features in the Feedback Channel (including Native RTs and Facebook Media previews) and now are working on a few more stellar tools for your arsenal.

Here’s what on tap in the coming weeks:

HootSuite Blackberry — We know you can’t wait and it’s getting close — we’re making it great to be worthy of the Owl and Blackberry’s passionate users

Short Owly Pro URLs — HootSuite’s custom URL shortening service is in secret private beta and working great! Get on the list for your chance to get shorter

HootSuite iPad — Those who bought ‘em, love ‘em and we’re making an all-new tool for Apple’s popular tablet rather than a hacked iPhone or web app

HootSuite iPhone — A batch of new features will make users of the magically translating, updating, statistics-gathering mobile genius machine even happier

Fixes

Life in the browser can get tricky with so many different versions and varieties. As such, a number of anomalies popped up which are now hammered down for better performance (BTW, check out this post about which browsers work best with HootSuite).

These refinements include:

• Search result columns in IE 7 & 8 are no longer mixed up
• Deleted DMs are now completely deleted
• Klout influence scores are now displayed in bios

Help

Some some users have reported veeerrrryyy slow performance — we continuing to monitor these reports and request you first do a hard refresh (CTRL+F5) and then try a different browser for trouble shooting. Still something amiss? Please submit a ticket at the Help Desk after searching for an answer to your conundrum.

We monitor all the mentions of HootSuite on Twitter and tend to the HootSuite Facebook page with great pleasure. However, the best place to go for help is the Help Desk. There are hundreds of articles to both assist you and apprise you of known issues. Still haven’t found what you are looking for? Submit a ticket if there is something we missed.

Feature requests are an important part of our community and tool evolution — we love hearing them but request that you share with others by posting at Feedback Channel. This allow others to vote ideas up and helps us gauge interest in new tools.

releases blackberry, bugs, Facebook, fxes, ipad, iPhone, mashable, oauth, releases, social media day, upadtes

The HTML 5 Vibe is Alive

After yesterday’s mighty launch of HootSuite 5, this nest of Owls is ready for a weekend of replenishing the fingers and brain. But before we shift to summertime leisure mode, we want to share a few awesome vids, pods and posts made by HootSuite users about the new release.

The Owl loves the attention - photo by @jasonkovacs

Video Fest

The video offerings include 2 versions of instructions about choosing your ReTweet style, a disco-fied review of new features, plus a getting started guide for new HootSuite users.

HootSuite5 & HootSuiteLuv from Nicole Yeary

HTML5 meets HootSuite ~ HootSuite5 smashed it again with incredible updates, of which I couldn’t pick one favorite. So Amazing – You really have to try for yourself, but I wanted to share HootSuite5 from my perspective. *Of course this is not an official HootSuite video

How to change back to “normal” retweets in Hootsuite — 107designs

Along with Hootsuite’s new interface came Twitter web retweets, which I’m not fond of in the least. After I discovered that it was optional, I thought I’d share how to change it back to “normal”. Hope this helps.

New Hootsuite Features on thegrandmamaryshow

Hootsuite 5 came out and it looks fabulous! One vital change you need to make is to change the RT feature and I show you how in this video.

Quick Start Vid

This one is handy for new HootSuite is a great foundation for new users but was released before the update. How to Use HootSuite -– A Quick Start Guide for Beginners by Technically Speaking

More Treats

Seeking audio commentary? Download this podcast:
Generally Speaking Production Network #046 Social Media Serenity

Seeking alpha-geek commentary? Mashable’s your source:
HootSuite Adds New Features and Fresh Interface with HTML5

{Update} Seeking stats knowledge? Evolutionary Designs has a post:
Quick Tip: Learn How to Integrate Google Analytics with Hootsuite5

Seeking a little bit o’ funtimes? Here ya go:
Four of the Most Awesome Hootsuite Updates | expertSEM

1. Blue Steel and Magnum- Way to go with class and choose two of the Derek Zoolander’s mind-alteration, hip gyrating looks.  Points simply for being that cool.  But, beware Hootsuite, “it’s not easy being really really good looking.”
   

More Hoots

For more HootSuite5-specific news from around Inida, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Japan …. well you get the idea … check out the HootSuite social bookmark stream and/or follow @hootwatch for the firehose of coverage.

News Roundup blue steel, HootSuite, hootsuite5, magnum, mashable, news, news round-up, zoolander

Keeping the media reports rolling out with another round-up of recent article about HootSuite. This time, the focus is on business users with a batch of tips, rankings, reviews and soliloquies about saving time, keeping an eye on assets and giving a hoot.

Settle in for a read to learn how to save time while increasing results in your social promotion campaigns.

As always, follow along with HootSuite’s social bookmarks and/or @hootwatch for the full news view as it happens.

Financial Post – Keeping tabs on your brand – see also: CBC

Ryan Holmes - (cropped) photo by Lyle Stafford for National Post

Matt Hartley writes: In essence, Hootsuite users can track who’s talking about their company who’s passing around links related to promotions and news and what services they’re using to do so.

“That’s kind of the Holy Grail of what Hootsuite does,” Mr. Holmes said.

“Social media marketing didn’t really exist as a job title prior to the last couple of years, but we’re really building this as a tool for them and also traditional marketers that are looking for tools,” he said.

Mashable – HootSuite Gives Groups More Twitter and Facebook Tools

Jolie O’Dell writes: We’ve noticed that HootSuite has been cranking out major upgrades consistently over the past several months. In terms of team collaboration and CRM social media tools, this company seems to be en fuego. Last week, HootSuite added Facebook support and geolocation features to its iPhone app.

A month ago, HootSuite integrated Foursquare and MySpace capabilities — a surefire path to the hearts of marketers and recording artist promoters. You can use HootSuite from your Android phone and you can use it to update your WordPress blog. Clearly, this team is focused on making a robust and competitive application in a very crowded space.

American Express OPEN Forum – How to Get the Most Out of Social Media Using Hootsuite : Technology

By Zachary Sniderman via Mashable: Managing a million different social media sites is a headache for even the most seasoned social media-ites. But what happens when your business is expected to maintain a Twitter account, a Facebook Page, or a WordPress blog?

Updating all those sites takes time and energy, but social media hubs like Hootsuite can help any small business efficiently manage their social media presence. Hootsuite is a free website that allows users to update, post, monitor, and track a range of popular social media services.

Like other social media hubs, Hootsuite’s hub can be customized to suit your needs. Whether you’re tracking one or multiple accounts across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more, Hootsuite might be an efficient, secure way to stay on top of all of them. Below are five quick ways to maximize Hootsuite … Read on …

SUITE101 MEDIA – Suite101.com Releases Its Second Annual Index Of Most Visited Canadian Web Sites

Suite101.com, a global content site that provides trusted and reliable information to consumers today released its second annual readership index of Canadian-owned Web sites, entitled “Where The Online Readers Are.” The second annual index reveals that the top sites remain largely content sites, and social media activity by the top-trafficked sites has increased substantially.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2   Ow.ly            http://ow.ly/                468   new   URL shortener
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    7   HootSuite        www.hootsuite.com            877   new   Marketing

VentureBeat – Foursquare declares platform-dom with launch of App Gallery

Camille Ricketts writes: Mobile location application Foursquare is diversifying itself into a platform of its own today by launching an aggregation of third-party applications built on top of its core service. It’s calling it the App Gallery.

{snip}

Currently, the featured apps include HootSuite (a service to share your favorite locations with your friends), Kickball (a new interface design), FourFace (a creative interface changer) and Mob Zombies (a game that plays on the zombie apocalypse meme).

The Rise To The Top – Why Entrepreneurs Should Give A Hoot About Hootsuite

David Garland writes: There are streams everywhere. Facebook. Twitter. Plus more. Information coming at you at a crazy pace. Now add in the fact, that many of us entrepreneurs are creating our own valuable content and promoting it. And keeping tabs on when our business pops up in a conversation. And paying attention to our niches. The list goes on and on.

Whew, I’m exhausted just thinking about it. So, what is the solution? What is an easy way to make it all manageable from anywhere (your computer, phone, etc.)? Ryan Holmes, founder of Invoke, came up with the solution for us entrepreneurs: Hootsuite.

As CEO of Hootsuite, Ryan has developed a unique platform that makes this quickly changing web easy to understand and manage. I had a chance to sit down (errr Skype down?) with Ryan and discuss Hootsuite for all of us.

Kevin Gilbert’s Weblog – HootSuite

What we hope to accomplish by using HootSuite is a more centralized place for managing our communications. We set up an account, using our company name and proceeded to add each of the company twitter accounts and our own personal accounts. Now, either of us can use the streamlined interface to “tweet” from our personal account or “tweet” from either of the company accounts.

{snip}

… more importantly, HootSuite can now track how many times a link was clicked. This lets us know which messages generated the most traffic for our websites. The more traffic, the more likely we are to establish ourselves as experts in what we’re doing and hopefully generate more leads for business.

StayOnSearch – Using Hootsuite to Manage Your Twitter Engagement Efforts

Mark Thompson writes: In my personal opinion, I have found Hootsuite to be by far the best Twitter client out there.  I’m sure a lot of people can make an argument for clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic, but I find Hootsuite to be the most user-friendly, feature-rich, and up-to-date Twitter client available.

The interface is clean, customizable, and includes a wealth of information about your twitter account.  Let’s take a detailed look into how Hootsuite can be used to manage your daily engagements for both personal and business use.

TCMnet.com – Balance social media channels for successful marketing of business

If you’re wanting to save a step, I’d try HootSuite, a free site that will allow you to post to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts at once. It also has a built-in link shortener.

If you have people with social media duties, you can give them different privileges on HootSuite without sharing your log-in information to the site. Also, you can edit access to specific social media accounts you have on Hootsuite. For example, if you have your personal Twitter account added on to HootSuite, you can select just the work account for access privileges.

Cruiter Talk – Hootsuite Riot: #Recruiters need it and will want it #justsayin

Hootsuite for those that don’t know it or use it is about to get downright nasty in this game. Not nasty in a bad way but the app has grown and it’s going to sick.  Forget the discussion internally about ROI and team management, this group has got it for you.

RISMedia – 5 Keys to Integrating Search and Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Key 4: Learn to monitor social media efficiently. Programs like TweetDeck, HootSuite and Seesmic make sharing content and links across Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook simpler. To monitor networks for inbound linking opportunities and reputation management, search columns for keywords or hashtags are extremely helpful. Additional monitoring can be done through Twitter Search and TweetBeep, while an overall online presence can be surveyed with tools like Trackur, Google Alerts or SocialMention.

More Hoots

As always, follow along with HootSuite’s social bookmarks and/or @hootwatch for the full news view as it happens.

News Roundup american express, business, hootsuite for business, mashable, reviews, suite 101, tactics, tips, Twitter for business, venture beat

As usual, we watched the news and commentary around the recent barrage of HootSuite iPhone releases and indeed there was plenty of conversation about social media tools for iPhones recently. No doubt people are passionate their phones and protective of their fave apps.

As outlined in many of the posts about new version, HootSuite iPhone is charting a unique course with tools like translation, localization, and click stats — plus multiple networks (Twitter and Facebook at this time) — to differentiate this mobile Owl from the rest of the flock.

Here’s a round-up of some of the posts which caught our eye. Certainly there are plenty more out there so consider following HootSuite’s social bookmarks to get the full firehose of news, and/or leave your recommended links in the comments for others to enjoy.

Mashable – Hootsuite Adds Facebook Support and Geolocation to iPhone App

Jennifer Van Grove writes: Now that Tweetie 2 is set to become the free and official Twitter app for iPhone, iPhone app makers have been forced to step up their game. HootSuite — maker of business-friendly Twitter apps — is doing just that, adding language translation, Facebook integration and geolocation support to its iPhone apps.

{snip}

Perhaps most significant is the addition of instant translation for more than 50 languages, which should significantly help marketers understand foreign language tweets, replies and direct messages.

When it comes to Facebook, users will able to send and receive updates from that network as well. HootSuite integration supports updates to Pages and profiles as well as the ability to view updates from friends and likers.

Cult of Mac – HootSuite’s iPhone App Souped-Up With A Translator, Bump-To-Follow, More

Eli Milchman writes: When HootSuite’s iPhone app landed late last year, it had already set itself apart with a unique stat-tracking feature.

Now, it’s leapt even further away from the pack with a slew of new tricks, including the ability to translatetweets from 50 different languages and a supercool feature that lets users bump the iPhone of users they’d like to follow. The developers have also upgraded HootSuite’s Facebook integration, given it geolocation functionality and generally tweaked the hell out of it.

Blog Herald – HootSuite Laughs At Tweetageddon, Adds Facebook And Translation Support

Darnell Clayton writes: After briefly disappearing from the iPhone app store, HootSuite has re-emerged with a meaner, leaner iPhone app that may help them survive tweetageddon when Twitter relaunches Tweetie as their official app.

{snip}

Another cool feature about the app was the ability to follow someone by merely “bumping” your iPhone next to theirs, (which is much more convenient than searching for their username), although this does require your iFriend to be running the HootSuite app as well.

Last but not least I am finding the translation tool very useful, especially when one is reading the latest rants of a certain Venezuelan President.

The app is impressive feature wise, although it seems to be geared more towards power users than those unfamiliar with Twitter (as the user interface is not as intuitive as Tweetie or Twittelator).

Overall I am enjoying HootSuite a lot more than when they first launched upon the app store, and hopefully they continue adding more social networks to the app (as not everyone enjoys updating their life on Twitter or Facebook).

Start-up Meme – HootSuite Isn’t Giving Up On iPhone: Integrates Translations, Geolocation And Facebook To The App

Sardar Mohkim Khan writes: If one wins the game the others find it harder and the best option they have is to give multiple things to gain some traction. Lets get real and talk sense. We all know that Tweetie 2 is gaining grounds to be fairly called the default choice for the iPhone’s Twitter client and competition is finding it hard to grab shares. There are always ways and HootSuite has one.

{snip}

What HootSuite is doing is something anyone else would do to raise share amongst competition. You know it when the ground is already taken by one, the only better way to compete is to offer multiple features that users find more convenient to use. Lets see how this one plays along for HootSuite.

Techvibes – HootSuite updates their popular iPhone app

Karim Kanji writes: Techvibes’ favourite social media tool, HootSuite has recently added a plethora of updates to their popular iPhone application.

{snip}

Not using HootSuite yet?  Shame on you.

Mobiletor.com – HootSuite for iPhone gets updated with Translation, Facebook & Geo-location

A mergence of instant language translation, social networking site, and geo-location may put squeeze on one to utter ‘yes’. HootSuite has just added more tools to the iPhone version of the highly appreciated social media dashboard including language translation, geo-location, and Facebook integration. The new update also comes with several key interface enhancements.

With Facebook support, social bugs can update their status, track their friends’ news updates, and schedule their messages for future publishing. Equipped with translate-ability, HootSuite snoozes in as a great choice for monitoring relevant topics and brand mentions from global friends and customers. Users can compose in their native language and translate on the go.

iLounge – HootSuite update adds Facebook, geolocation

HootSuite has released an update to its popular iPhone Twitter client, adding support for posting updates to Facebook and including geolocation information to Twitter posts.

IntoMobile – HootSuite for iPhone Updated with Translations, Facebook

Simon Sage writes: HootSuite’s Twitter client for iPhone has been updated with a few powerful new features, like automated language translation, bumping iPhones to follow one another, and geotagging tweets. HootSuite also plays nice with Facebook now, just like their web app, enabling users to send updates to page fans and profile friends.

Geotagging support is excellent, but a bit of a no-brainer. I’m curious to see the real use cases for translations; HootSuite pegs itself as a twitter client for pros, so maybe companies dealing with a lot of international customers would find the feature handy. There have been a few usability improvements as well, including landscape keyboard, reply to all, Bump to follow people on Twitter, and general interface enhancements.

News Roundup blog herald, cult of mac, ilounge, iPhone, mashable, mobiletor, news, reviews, start-up meme, techvibes, Twitter

Plenty going on here at HootSuite HQ but before we lose track, we’re continuing on with the News Round-up catch-up fest with a variety of remarks, reviews, accolades and anecdotes from magazine, websites, vidcast and lists. Enjoy and stay tuned for more announcements coming shortly.

It’s a Good Thing

Min Online (a “Media Industry Newsletter: Covering Magazines for 60 Years”) announced their Best of the Web Award Winners including Tweeter of the Year – Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia’s eponymous spokeswoman – Martha Stewart.

We mention this because The Martha Show use HootSuite to share musing with their audience and we think that is as tasty as homemade pie.

Here’s a snippet from Min’s article:

Not only is Martha Stewart far and away the magazine industry’s highest profile tweeter, her embrace of the microblogging platform early in its lifecycle helped Twitter itself break out of its niche. If Martha can bake, sew, garden, host a TV show, run a media empire and post multiple tweets a day, then so can the rest of us.

Made for Teams

Sport Marketing 2.0’s sports-centric vidcast, “The Row Show” talked about HootSuite while lounging on couches with laptops/iPads and coffee. After a smattering of interesting tech industry news, they give a comprehensive overview of features of the HootSuite’s web and mobile versions including real-world scenarios about how to utilize the tools with your team – for sports, biz or what have you. They even give a shout-out for the webinars. Thanks guys!

“Essential” Says Mashable

We’re always pleased when the uber-useful blog Mashable mentions us. This time Christina Warren includes HootSuite in a list of 10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers:

HootSuite is a great tool not only for managing multiple Twitter accounts (or allowing multiple users access to an account), but also for managing multiple social networks. In November, HootSuite introduced support for LinkedIn and Facebook. HootSuite also now supports WordPress blogs, which works great if you want to have a way to schedule posts and messages to multiple networks. HootSuite also supports alerts and stats tracking. HootSuite is free.

Charted Up

Jamie Beckland wrote a comprehensive review of Twitter tools for businesses in The Four Best Social Media Management Platforms for Corporate Marketers. He compares HootSuite alongside CoTweet, SocialOomph and Spredfast. Under the “good” column, he mentions HootSuite’s “Great team permissions; stream views” and points out it’s best-suited for “cross-departmental teams” in his CC-licensed chart.

Top 10 Robots

Another HootSuite for Android review worth noting comes from Drew Alam of Top10.com in the aptly-named Top 10 Android apps of the year so far, ergo:

Hootsuite is a robust Twitter client for professional users. It allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule tweets in advance and track statistics to measure the success of your tweets.

One of the unique features of this app is that you can create custom streams for specific tags and searches, which will display tweets matching those keywords – making keeping track of important topics a breeze.

Evolving URL Tools

Evolutionary Designs adds their thoughts in Hootsuite Adds New URL Shortener Options:

Although I haven’t had much time to test this new feature, I will be testing this overt he next few days to see if Ow.ly works better and I get more clicks using it now that they removed the social bar from it.

That’ll do for this News Round-up but more in the queue to share in between announcements of the new feature releases and tips and tricks for making the most of HootSuite. Need more HootSuite news? Consider following social bookmarks via Delicious.com/HootSuite and/or @hootwatch.

News Roundup android, corporate, htly, martha stewart, mashable, news, ow.ly, reviews, robots, row show, sport marketing, url, vidcast, video

CN Tower in Toronto on HootTour

The HootSuite crew was on the road for the past couple weeks in support of our beloved media dashboard. Stops included the 140 Twitter Conference in Seattle, SXSWi in Austin, and Sprout Up in Toronto.

Along the way, we made lots of new friends, shared plenty of interesting conversations, and listened to great feedback from enthusiastic users. Thanks to all who helped us along our journey and made us feel welcome in their cities.

While on the road, we kept an eye on what folks were saying and several articles caught our eye. Settle in and take a look at a sample (for more HootSuite coverage, follow the social bookmark stream):

Mashable Breaks the News

First up, in Seattle Mashable’s Ben Parr wrote HootSuite to Integrate with Foursquare and Myspace and posted the breaking news live from the conference floor:

Today at the #140tc Twitter Conference in Seattle, Washington (which I keynoted this morning), HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes announced that its popular Twitter application will be integrating with both MySpace and Foursquare, starting this week at the South by Southwest Interactive conference.

While Mr. Holmes didn’t divulge many details about the MySpace and Foursquare integrations, we can make some educated guesses as to how they will work. MySpace integration will most likely look the same as it does in Tweedeck: You’ll gain access to your MySpace feed and gain the ability to update your MySpace status.

Wow 1386 Retweets (so far)! Speaking of Mashable, here’s HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes and Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore later at SXSW.

Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Ryan Holmes of HootSuite at SXSW - photo by John Biehler

Sprout Up Storytime

Next up, thanks to Erin Bury from Sprouter who wrote: Ryan Holmes’ journey from pizza and paintball to web entrepreneur recapping Ryan’s presentation at Sprout Up:

Ryan Holmes hasn’t always been a web entrepreneur. The founder of popular Twitter client and social media dashboard Hootsuite may be a web guy now, but he started out with something very offline: paintball. He started a paintball company, which is still thriving and is run by his brother today. He then moved on to another offline business, pizza, when he opened and owned a restaurant.

He finally moved into the web space when he founded full-service interactive agency Invoke in 2005. The agency focuses on building brand advocacy through social media tools – one of those tools that the team developed is Hootsuite, which launched in 2008 and just announced the finalization of $1.9 million in venture funding.

Great recap of Ryan’s talk and thanks for taking care of us in Toronto! Oh and there’s a video of a bit of Ryan’s talk in T.O.

Hoot <3

Aaron from PNC shares a video Hootsuite: I Love You (btw, HootSuite <3s you too):

Hootsuite is more than a twitter client.  In the video below, I’ll go over why I love Hootsuite so much and how I leverage it to not only update all my statuses on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but to also keep track of click throughs and trends.

Great info! Be sure to check out his video:

Checked in, Rocked out

The Foursquare and MySpace release garnered a load of coverage including Cheryl Phillips writing for The Examiner who shared HootSuite at SXSW: Foursqure, Myspace help you check in and rock out:

SXSW is here. If you’re not a HootSuite fan, you may want to become one if you’re attending the interactive media, film, and music conference in Austin, TX March 12 – 21, 2010.The creative geniuses at HootSuite have added FourSquare and MySpace to the dashboard just in time for SXSW. HootSuite is a popular application that help manage multiple social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Wordpress.com.

Thanks  for spreading the word Cheryl! To prove we were at SXSW, here’s a photo of some of the HootSuite tribe @ SXSW. Yup, sunny days require cool hats and shades .

HootSuite tribe in Austin - @d1337 @daveohoots @quikness - photo by @kk

Slideshow Time

Thanks to PRowl for a mention in SlideShare and HootSuite featuring real-world scenarios:

One great thing I like about this site is the endless topics of slideshows. Take this great slideshow for example, which is a tutorial on managing multiple twitter profiles on Hootsuite. Last week in our PRowl meeting, we talked about managing social media and sites we enjoyed using. Hootsuite was a site some of our members used (I personally use it too), which allows scheduled tweets, as well as organizing multiple social media accounts (like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) all so they are easily and simultaneously accessible.

Thanks PRowl! Also, be sure to check out Matthew Tommasi’s HootSuite slideshow.

Do you need another Reason?

Top One Report wrote: Why Should You Use HootSuite:

Social media can be a huge waste of time if done incorrectly. Tweeting, staying abreast of others’ tweets, it can suck away a lot of your valuable time. So what do you do? How do you make sure your Twittering doesn’t take over your whole business or non-profit?

Now there is HootSuite. “The Professional Twitter Client,” HootSuite has many pros that will help you keep the amount of time you spend on social media under control.

Visit the post to get the reasons and some great tips. BTW, we’ll be sharing more Twitter tips for business at the F5 Expo on April 7th in Vancouver – more info to follow.

Enough Hoots for Today

That’s a wrap for now. Keep the blogs and Twitters coming plus keep an eye out for an interview with CEO Ryan Holmes in Techvibes Toronto by @karimkanji. Here’s one more pic for the road – this one from the HootSuite breakfast in Toronto with a remarkable group of folks sharing ideas and conversations over bacon and coffee.

HootSuite breakfast by LexnGer on Flickr

News Roundup 140tc, android, austin, foursquare, mashable, MySpace, PRowl, seattle, sprout up, sprouter, SXSW, toronto

With recent news about adding funding partners and the newly-released social media iPhone app, the web is brimming with articles about HootSuite. But of particular interest to us are the people and companies who are using the social media dashboard in inspiring and interesting ways – plus teaching others how to spark social media-powered campaigns designed to grow audience and spread messages.

With this in mind, here’s a round-up for reviews, tutorials, punditry and accolades from the past fortnight.

Mashed up for Business

First off, a double does of Mashable and American Express Open Forum – the wise minds and info curators @mashable contribute knowledge to AmEx’s space for SME’s and entrepreneurs to share tips and tactics.

Mashable’s Barb Dybwad (perhaps the coolest Twitter handle ever) shares Essential Social Media Tools for the Small Business which includes CoTweet as well as HootSuite:

If your small business has a presence on Twitter, you’ll want to look into two great and free tools for managing your account: CoTweet and HootSuite. You can think of them essentially as Customer Relationship Management tools for Twitter.

Both services offer a similar core functionality, allowing you to manage multiple individual accounts, give multiple authors access to individual Twitter accounts, search for keywords and monitor saved searches over time, and get message notifications based on certain criteria. Beyond that, each service has its own custom features — and which app is right for your business will depend on who in your organization needs to use it and what functions you need to access in your business.

Another @mashable writer Leah Betancourt contributed 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Avoid Social Media Panic which appear on Mashable and Am EX Open Forum and provides practical tips for busineses to get over the glassy-eyed feeling when adding social media-powered campaigns to their marketing mix – of course her tips include using HootSuite for tracking.

The notion of getting into social media might seem overwhelming for any small business. Spending time upfront before launch to create a plan with goals that includes how to translate that social media presence into dollars will go a long way toward achieving success.

Some examples of metrics to look at are: How many visitors came to your site from a social media site; Conversion (i.e. how many people clicked through to your site and then bought a product or service), Falls said. In minimal terms, be able to say something like: I spent X dollars and was able to track X amount of revenue (or percentage).

Link shorteners can help track click throughs on Twitter. Twitter tools such as Seesmic (), TweetDeck (), HootSuite () and others can help users track mentions, direct messages and @replies.

Hoots for Growth

Inc.com published Lori Highby’s experiences building her web design business in How to Use HootSuite for Business (article is dated Feb 1, 2010 which is in the future ~ whoa) – again practical advice for entrepreneurs:

I use HootSuite to streamline the process. It lets me manage multiple accounts on one dashboard. I can schedule tweets in advance instead of logging on every time I want to send one. When I write a new blog post, HootSuite automatically sends a tweet to my followers. If I’m reading an interesting article online, I can click on the Hootlet feature in my browser’s Favorites bar to send out a tweet with the story’s name and URL. A stats feature lets me see how many people clicked on any given link so I can tailor future tweets accordingly.

I also use HootSuite to keep track of tweets containing certain keywords. Anytime someone mentions Keystone Click, for example, it appears on my HootSuite dashboard. I sift through the responses at the beginning and end of each day, tracking both positive and negative feedback and reaching out to potential customers. I use the search term Web design company to scour Twitter for prospective clients.

BtoBMagazine’s Rich Karpinski addresses businesses looking to gain a foothold with their outreach methods in Twitter tools for teams – As Tweeting evolves into a group activity, applications offer options – and includes a comment from the Chief Executive Owl:

While many marketers still use standalone clients or even Twitter.com for their tweeting, the convoluted workflow requirements for keeping up with Twitter, not to mention all the other social networks, scream for a more capable tool. HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes, for instance, calls his company’s app “the ultimate social media dashboard,” and in recent months has added LinkedIn and Facebook postings to its Twitter core. HootSuite counts Dell, Fox and MSNBC among its customers.

Author Holly Reville created a video about how to use Hootsuite to Manage Multiple Accounts & Schedule Tweets – Holly Reville is a humanitarian, an entrepreneur and an author and founder of Xpressive Marketing, specializing in corporate training, cause and social media marketing. (Note: Subscribe to Holly’s YouTube channel for more). Here’s the set-up:

Let’s face it in today’s busy lifestyles we can all use a little help making it easier to keep up with our Social Media efforts. Hootsuite.com is a valuable tool for doing just that. It gives you the ability to manage multiple twitter accounts and schedule tweets ahead of time. Check out this video to learn how!

Helping Haiti

from United Nations Development Programme's Flickr photostream

Speaking of humanitarians, Brad came up with a plan to use HootSuite to schedule reminders to encourage followers to donate to Haiti even when the stirring images fade from the TV broadcast on Lawn with Gnomes post: Hacking Haiti Donations.

I gave to Haiti, did you? While I did give, it just felt like it wasn’t as much as I would like to or can afford at the moment. I thought maybe I’ll take time to work in a local charity? Reality of course set in, the reality that I’m a full-time student and hold a part-time job.

So what’s the idea/hack? It’s simple; 1) Sign up or sign into Hootsuite.

Love that first step and best wishes for your noble quest to help Haiti. BTW United Nations Development Programmer are using Twitter

Quick Hoots

The Marketing Tech blog’s pundit Douglas Karr offers some gentle copywriting advice: Dear Tech Marketers: Stop Marketing Features over Benefits and was kind enough to follow up to my comment:

Congratulations DaveO on the new digs! You’re working for a company with an amazing product. I especially love your iPhone app, I believe it to be the best on the market. Hopefully you can get this post over to your web marketing team, I believe it will help you improve your penetration of the enterprise market. Thanks for coming out and responding – it says a lot about HootSuite!

Blogger James St. John lends a hand to HootSuite’s support efforts with a re-cap of key features including using lists plus adding Facebook and Linkedin in The Professional Twitter Client, for serious marketeers

Seeking More?

hootsuite news amex, blogs, business, case studies, growth, hacking haiti, haiti, HootSuite, mashable, news, sme, tips, tricks

The results are in! HootSuite has won Mashable’s 2009 Open Web Award for Best Twitter App. We’re incredibly honoured by the vote of confidence Twitter users have shown us through the OWAs.

This award is a crowning achievement that caps off a whirlwind year for us. HootSuite has also won Shorty and Canadian New Media Awards, and was selected as a finalist in the prestigious Groundswell Awards.

A year after launching, HootSuite has become the most used Twitter web client after Twitter itself. In November, HootSuite also added Facebook and LinkedIn functionality. This month, we’ve released our iPhone app to much fanfare. Through all this, our goal is to be your go-to professional social media dashboard.

Thank you to Mashable for hosting this award, to everybody who voted for us, and to users such as yourselves for inspiring us to make the Best Twitter App!

Twitter, hootsuite news, social media announcement, awards, honors, mashable, OWAs, winner